The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit by Ralph Waldo Trine online

X SOME METHODS OF ATTAINMENT

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Now the value of prayer is not that God will change or order any laws or forces to suit the numerous and necessarily the diverse petitions of any. All things are through law, and law is fixed and inexorable. The value of prayer, of true prayer, is that through it one can so harmonise his life with the Divine order that intuitive perceptions of truth and a greater perception and knowledge of law becomes his possession. As has been said by an able contemporary thinker and writer: "We cannot form a passably thorough notion of man without saturating it through and through with the idea of a cosmic inflow from outside his world life--the inflow of God. Without a large consciousness of the universe beyond our knowledge, few men, if any, have done great things.[C]

I shall always remember with great pleasure and profit a call a few days ago from Dr. Edward Emerson of Concord, Emerson's eldest son. Happily I asked him in regard to his father's methods of work--if he had any regular methods. He replied in substance: "It was my father's custom to go daily to the woods--_to listen_. He would remain there an hour or more in order to get whatever there might be for him that day. He would then come home and write into a little book--his 'day-book'--what he had gotten. Later on when it came time to write a book, he would transcribe from this, in their proper sequence and with their proper connections, these entrances of the preceding weeks or months. The completed book became virtually a ledger formed or posted from his day-books."

The prophet is he who so orders his life that he can adequately listen to the voice, the revelations of the over soul, and who truthfully transcribes what he hears or senses. He is not a follower of custom or of tradition. He can never become and can never be made the subservient tool of an organisation. His aim and his mission is rather to free men from ignorance, superstition, credulity, from half truths, by leading them into a continually larger understanding of truth, of law--and therefore of righteousness.

It was more than a mere poetic idea that Lowell gave utterance to when he said:

The thing we long for, that we are
For one transcendent moment.

To establish this connection, to actualise this God-consciousness, that it may not be for one transcendent moment, but that it may become constant and habitual, so that every thought arises, and so that every act goes forth from this centre, is the greatest good that can come into the possession of man. There is nothing greater. It is none other than the realisation of Jesus' injunction--"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." It is then that he said--Do not worry about your life. Your mind and your will are under the guidance of the Divine mind; your every act goes out under this direction and all things pertaining to your life will fall into their proper places. Therefore do not worry about your life.

When a man finds his centre, when he becomes centred in the Infinite, then redemption takes place. He is redeemed from the bondage of the senses. He lives thereafter under the guidance of the spirit, and this is salvation. It is a new life that he has entered into. He lives in a new world, because his outlook is entirely new. He is living now in the Kingdom of Heaven. Heaven means harmony. He has brought his own personal mind and life into harmony with the Divine mind and life. He becomes a coworker with God.

It is through such men and women that God's plans and purposes are carried out. They not only hear but they interpret for others God's voice. They are the prophets of our time and the prophets of all time. They are doing God's work in the world, and in so doing they are finding their own supreme satisfaction and happiness. They are not looking forward to the Eternal life. They realise that they are now in the Eternal life, and that there is no such thing as eternal life if this life that we are now in is not it. When the time comes for them to stop their labours here, they look forward without fear and with anticipation to the change, the transition to the other form of life--but not to any other life. The words of Whitman embody a spirit of anticipation and of adventure for them:

Joy, Shipmate, joy!
(Pleas'd to my soul at death I cry)
One life is closed, one life begun,
The long, long anchorage we leave,
The ship is clear at last, she leaps.
Joy, Shipmate, joy!

They have an abiding faith that they will take up the other form of life exactly where they left it off here. Being in heaven now they will be in heaven when they awake to the continuing beauties of the life subsequent to their transition. Such we might also say is the teaching of Jesus regarding the highest there is in life here and the best there is in the life hereafter.

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